With fireworks and fanfare, Cincinnati casino now open

Casino is fourth, last to open in Ohio

UPDATED 7:51 AM EST Mar 05, 2013

CINCINNATI -

The Horseshoe Cincinnati Casino opened Monday to fanfare and great hopes, along with some trepidation from neighboring states.

The casino was cleared for operations by the Ohio Casino Control Commission late Sunday and opened at 8:30 p.m. Monday night after more than two years of construction. It will be the last of four casinos that Ohio voters approved in 2009 after a statewide campaign touted the immediate boost the casinos would give to Ohio's economy.

Visitors began lining up at about 5 p.m. Parking on site was limited due to a VIP event.

Unlike most attractions in Cincinnati, the casino will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's going to feel very very different and its going to be a place that people will say, 'I want to come there and have a drink or have dinner or watch the games, just to hang out'," Rock Gaming President Matt Cullen said. "I think that's going to be very different from the typical experience people have."

The casino sits within a few hundred feet of the Hamilton County Justice Center, but Cullen said he didn't see that as a problem, but a possible future opportunity.

"I know that there have been discussions about redoing over time the county campus and see if there's opportunities to consolidate or realign or something," he said. "I think a project like this gives you that opportunity to look at things on a continuous basis going forward and say, 'Is this the best way to do it? Is there a way we could better enhance our downtown?'"

Attendees waited for some time in a cold drizzle for the doors to open, then entered the casino with fanfare and fireworks.

"We can't rate our (experience) right now because we're not together yet. Everything is a little bit uncoordinated. You have to wait on your drinks, you have to wait on your food, you have to wait to cash out at machines, everything is a bit uncoordinated. But this is opening night, so with that said, we have to give them a pass for that," Kendall Lockard said.

Casinos in Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus all opened over the past year and have brought in nearly $404 million combined. From that, about $133.2 million has gone to Ohio schools, counties and cities.

Cincinnati's casino is projected to draw about $227 million in gross revenue in its first year. That would bring in about $75 million in taxes.

Though those figures are far lower than earlier estimates, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory hailed the casino as a regional and national destination ahead of its opening.

"It's a home run," Mallory said. "This casino will have the ability to draw people from all around the country. This is a top-line casino, and the people who are accustomed to the big casinos in Vegas, they're not going to miss anything here."

Though no hotels are attached, and nothing quite compares to the energy or spectacle of the Vegas strip, Mallory referred to the Cincinnati casino's bustling location on what used to be a run-down parking lot and ticked off amenities including a buffet, a VIP players' lounge with high limits, a World Series of Poker room and three outward-facing restaurants, including Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville and Bobby's Burger Palace by celebrity chef Bobby Flay. Both Buffett and Flay also have outposts in Las Vegas.

Across the state line in Indiana, casinos and state leaders have been bracing for the development.

"The hovering threat to Indiana's dominance in commercial casino revenues among its sister states is evolving into reality," Ernest Yelton, executive director of Indiana's Gaming Commission, wrote in a 2012 annual report to Gov. Mitch Daniels. Nearly all of Indiana's 13 gambling venues would be affected, he added, "some dearly."

Over the past two decades, Indiana's casino industry has brought in $10 billion in taxes to become the state's third-largest revenue source after sales and income taxes.

But casinos there are in decline. Last year, taxes on casino revenues in Indiana dropped 4.2 percent, from $787.4 million in 2011 to $754 million in 2012, the steepest drop amid a three-year fall.

In the annual report, Yelton cited the economic climate, pointed to threats to Indiana's industry from several neighboring states, including Michigan and Kentucky, and called Ohio's new casinos the biggest challenge facing Indiana.

In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has tried and failed every year since his 2007 election to legalize casinos in the face of opposition from Republican lawmakers and a racetrack industry worried about competition.

At a news conference Feb. 21, Beshear lamented the opening of Cincinnati's casino.

"The casino in Cincinnati's good news for Ohio and bad news for Kentucky," Beshear said. "Right now we've got thousands of Kentuckians that have been going out of state, and now they'll also be going to Cincinnati to spend their Kentucky money in Ohio, and then Ohio's going to keep the benefits of that."

Beshear said that Kentucky needs to legalize casinos to start bringing in taxes for schools and infrastructure.

"I hope that sooner or later we get our act together here and legalize casino gaming so that we can start keeping our money at home," he said.

Ohio had a similar battle before voters approved the state's four casinos in 2009, with four previous failed attempts.

The 2009 issue won approval after proponents lamented tax dollars going to Indiana, Michigan and West Virginia, and said that casinos in Ohio's four largest cities would create tens of thousands of jobs and boost the economy.

Opponents of Ohio's casinos largely consisted of groups that criticized revenue predictions as inflated and pointed to the societal ills of gambling, including addictions that leave some destitute. They also criticized Ohio's 33 percent tax rate on the casinos for being lower than some other states.

Ohio's casinos were original forecast to bring in nearly $2 billion annually. That would have generated $643 million in taxes for schools, counties and cities. Now, their yearly revenues are now expected to be just under $1 billion.

Industry experts say the lower revenues are a result of the economic climate and competition from storefront gambling-style operations in the state known as Internet cafes.

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